The Amphetamine Phenylethylamine Effect

– Stage 4 –

"Electricity"

He blamed the entire thing on Penny.

She was sat there, one seat off of his spot, legs curled up and fingers gripping a glossy magazine. Innocent, some might say, but Sheldon knew the truth – she was the Devil in disguise, and every time she licked her index finger to turn to the next page his body just…went wild, with the force of something akin to a thermonuclear reactor going into meltdown.

She licked her fingertip and turned the page. Sheldon gripped the edge of his desk with white knuckles.

The door to the apartment suddenly opened. "Sheldon, I was looking at– Oh, hey, Penny! What are you doing here?"

That was something Sheldon had also contemplated, just after Penny had walked in and sat down without a word while he had been typing up his latest theorem.

Leonard threw his keys into the designated bowl and kicked the apartment door shut behind him, grinning inanely at Penny.

The smile Penny returned Sheldon could only describe as weak. "Hey. Yeah, just hanging out with Sheldon."

He resisted raising his eyebrows in surprise – that was what they had been doing? Not awkwardly sitting across the room from each other in silence, while he contemplated the positives of blinding himself so he didn't have to see her lick her finger one more time?

Leonard seemed just as shocked as he. "Really?"

Leonard looked over to Sheldon, eyebrows up above the heavy black frame of his glasses. Sheldon didn't bother confirming or denying Penny's statement. He had found recently that where Penny was concerned and Leonard tried to involve himself, Sheldon felt rather…protective, almost.

Penny just nodded at Leonard and went back to her magazine.

Leonard slowly – dazedly, really – wandered over to Sheldon, his voice low as he spoke. "You didn't tell me she was here."

Sheldon looked up at him, relieved that Leonard was blocking his view of Penny caressing her finger with her pink tongue.

"Considering you were not in the vicinity at the time Penny entered the apartment, and that you had not given me any express instructions as to alert you of her presence…I would say that my not informing you was reasonable."

Leonard just rolled his eyes. "Great. Thanks, Sheldon."

He strode off to his bedroom, muttering to himself.

Sheldon caught Penny staring at him, her eyebrows raised and a smile curling her lips.

"What?"

His voice was near croaking, and his bluntness was unusual – Penny was doing bad things to him.

She gave him a long low whistle, presumably to indicate something of note. "Why'd he run off?"

Sheldon turned in his chair, resting his elbows on the arm rests and steepling his fingers. He considered whether the truth of Leonard's obvious infatuation with her would drive her away or not, and he tried to come to terms with the small ache the thought of her exit created inside of him.

"I believe that Leonard is frustrated that he was not in the apartment when you arrived, so as to hover around you the way electrons hover around the central nucleus of an atom." At Penny's 'look,' he clarified, "He sticks to you like molasses in July."

Penny's eyes suddenly glazed over. "What was that?"

He frowned at her. "What was what?"

"That…voice."

"The accent, you mean? You know I was born and raised in Texas, Penny. My mother's sayings have stuck with me over my life, along with my father's recipe for the perfect hangover tonic."

Penny stared at him, pink suffusing her cheekbones. "It just…sounded nice."

Sheldon watched her in confusion for a moment as she shifted in her seat, before turning back to his laptop and deciding to finish off his theorem before Leonard returned to pester Penny.

He didn't hear her behind him until it was too late, and as he spun around to face her, his mouth parting to utter something, he found his lips suddenly pressed to Penny's.

He gasped against her lips, freezing as her mouth slanted over his softly and gently…as if coaxing him.

Sheldon's heart slammed against his ribs, his blood racing with cool adrenaline and his skin prickling with natural electricity. He found those prickles sweeping up his body as Penny pouted her mouth against his.

Her lips were warm, he found, and soft – so soft they reminded him of the velveteen bear his meemaw had given him on his fifth birthday – and the fact that he had his mouth pressed against the place where Penny consumed nourishment and contained germ-ridden saliva didn't even register.

Suddenly, without meaning to at all, he jerked back and their lips parted with a bolt of gentle electricity.

She was panting. He was shell-shocked.

Leaving her bent at the waist, lips flushed red and eyes half-closed, Sheldon escaped to his room at a pace the Flash would have been proud of.